n dear to
David Lockwin. He cannot abstain from more purchases of Chicago
papers. They are familiar--like the books in David Lockwin's library
at Chicago.

This is a dreary life, without a friend. He dares not to seek
acquaintances. Not a soul, not even a restaurant keeper, has ventured
to be familiar. The man with a broken nose and missing teeth--the man
with a grotesque voice--is scarcely desired as a customer at select
places on the avenues and Broadway. Let him find better accommodations
among the Frenchmen and Italians on Sixth avenue.

"Probably," they say, "he has fallen in a duel."

But there are fits of melancholia. Return, Robert Chalmers, to your
handsome apartments. Draw down your folding-bed, turn on the heat,
study those Chicago papers. Live once again! What is this? A
reaction at Chicago. Why, here is a page of panegyric. Here is a
large portrait of the late Hon. David Lockwin, lost in Georgian Bay!

The man whisks off his bed, and runs it up to the wall, whereupon he
may confront a handsome mirror. He compares the two faces.

"A change. A change, indeed!" he exclaims sadly. It is not alone in
the features. The new man is growing meager. He is an inconsequential
person. He is a character to be kept waiting in an ante-room while
strutting personages walk into the desired presence.

He pulls the bed down. He cannot lie on it now. He takes a chair and
greedily reads the apotheosis of David Lockwin.

As he reads he is seized with a surprising feeling. In all this
eulogium he sees the hand of Esther Lockwin. Without her aid this
great biography could not have been collated.

The sweat stands on his brow. He studies the type, to learn those
confessions that the publishers make, one to another, but not to the
world.

"It is paid for," he groans. He is wounded and unhappy.

"It is her cursed pride," he says. "I'm glad I'm out of it all."

He sits, week after week, hands deep in pockets, his legs stretched
out, one ankle over the other, his chin far down on his chest.

"Funny man in the east parlor!" says the chambermaid.

"Isn't he ugly!" says her fellow-chambermaid.

But after this long discontent, Robert Chalmers finds that Chicago
mourns for him. He is flattered. "I earned it!" he cries, and goes in
search of the books that once eased him--the identical copies.

The movement for a cenotaph makes him smile. On the whole, he is glad
men are so sentimental about monu